'Muller turca'
de John Frederick Lewis

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Two women in vaguely Middle Eastern dress are chatting in a corner with a carved screen which is casting a reflection of its carving on the wall. There is a mirror on the wall above the reflection which shows the side of the standing woman's face as she is putting on an earring. The standing woman is wearing a long flowing red dress with trailing sleeves. A gold-colured, richly patterned undergarment is visible through a wide V-shaped slash of her dress. She has a patterned knotted sash low on her hips and is wearing a square red cap bound with a dark scarf which trails its ends down her back. She is putting on an earring in front of a mirror as she looks down to the woman half-lying down on a bench in front of the screen. The woman on the bench is wearing a heavily patterned, gold-trimmed, dark jacket with trailing sleeves over a red/brown checked skirt and some sort of flower bedecked close bonnet with a trailing ribbon down her back. Image by John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876).

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Image: John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876) #jumblepublishing #publishing #editing #selfpublishing #johnfredericklewis #artworks

This Lewis painting depicts a young woman in idealized traditional regional dress standing on a balcony above a sandy Mediterranean coast. Her colorful attire with hues of green, orange, and purple, contrasts with the neutral tones of the building and balustrade. It is minute details like the specked face blended with the heavy gouache of the folk costume that stand out. In July 1840, Lewis left Britain for a decade, traveling through the Mediterranean and finally settling in Cairo, where English novelist Thackeray described him as living “a dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life.” Lewis’s stay in the East inspired a shift in his style towards a meticulous handling and a luminous, high-toned palette mixed with copious amounts of gouache, already seen in this watercolor from his visit to Athens on his way to Cairo. This trip inspired a shift in his style away from an emphasis on heavy tone and dramatic effect towards a meticulous handling and a luminous, high-toned palette mixed with copious amounts of gouache. A Greek Girl Standing on a Balcony exemplifies this new approach, which won him considerable acclaim when he returned to England. In 1852, Lewis was hailed as watercolor’s greatest living exponent with The Art Journal calling his style “the ne plus ultra of finish in water-color art.”

A Greek Girl Standing on a Balcony by John Frederick Lewis (British) - Watercolor and gouache over graphite on paper / 1840 - Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, Connecticut) #womeninart #art #painting #JohnFrederickLewis #ycba #yale #artwork #womensart #greek #britishartist #lewis #watercolor

Full figure depiction of a female servant who is walking through the shadows of an arched entranceway. She is dressed in an exotic style, and the scenery behind her is Egyptian-looking, but her skin is pale and her features Western. She carries a tray on which is set two small cups and two small inverted glasses. Her dark hair is partly covered with a turban headdress which hangs darkly behind her head, framing her pale neck. She is dressed in richly exotic garments, patterned and worn in a layered and loose style tied at the waist with a wide sash, and ornamented with a necklace. Over these robes she wears a short navy jacket with gold leaf-pattern embroidery and gold trim. She stands with one foot placed on a step that leads out from the darkness of the entranceway into a sunlit foreground with a coloured mosaic tiled floor; the open door to the left is decorated with panels carved into geometric relief designs. The light from the walled garden beyond frames the subject. Palm trees and a minaret are visible beyond the garden wall.

The Coffee Bearer by John Frederick Lewis (British) - Oil on panel / 1857 - Manchester (England) Art Gallery #womeninart #britishartist #painting #coffee #art #womansart #manchesterartgallery #artwork #johnfredericklewis #oilpainting #bskyart #bsky.art #coffeeart #lewis #artbsky #fineart